Early on after I had just started AIM, I asked author and missionary Elisabeth Elliott what advice she would give to young missionaries.  She answered, “If I had it do over again, I would pray more.”  This counsel has stayed with me ever since.  It is through the tool of prayer that God has built AIM.

On my trip to Mexico in the fall of 1997, God showed me a new and challenging direction for our ministry.  For the longest time, I had been waiting on God’s direction concerning the training ministry that I believed He wanted to give us.  I grew frustrated in waiting on His leading.  In fact, I was tempted to begin making it happen on my own.

Thankfully, God did lead.  More often than not, as I walk through life I wonder if I’ve heard God correctly.  But on this day, as I prayed, I felt Him strongly saying that we are to begin by training Mexican young people of college age. Training should last for a year and be geared toward missions with an emphasis on hands-on ministry.

I excitedly shared this with staff members whom I felt would be involved in implementing the idea.  Still, I was bothered by a gaping hole in the plan.  Where would these young people come from?

On the last night of our project, we wanted to throw a party at The Gateway for the Mexicans at the women’s shelter and the orphanage at which we had been working.  That evening, they arrived at The Gateway and were seated at tables to be fed.  Entering the room, I noticed a table of young Mexican men.  They seemed to be exactly the kind of young men that I felt God was leading us to train.

“Where did these young men come from?” I asked.

“They are being trained at the Bible school at the Casa Betel orphanage in Matamoros, which Ismael runs.”  I was told.

My mind raced.  Perhaps we could work alongside Ismael in training his young men;  I needed to talk with him.

I introduced myself to Ismael and began asking questions.  I was astonished at the answers.  He had started the orphanage and the Bible school simultaneously.  The students are trained in the mornings and in the afternoons do ministry: street evangelism, feeding the poor, and working around the orphanage.  On Saturdays, they go out and evangelize.  At the conclusion of their training, they are sent out, much as Jesus’ disciples, by twos, without any support to start a ministry.  In fact, the entire ministry is run with very little support.

Ismael was immediately receptive to the idea of a partnership.  He and his wife had been burning the candle at both ends running the orphanage and teaching two classes each.  When we sat down to talk at greater length, we realized that God seemed to be orchestrating a partnership.  The same morning that I felt God speaking to me, Ismael had awakened from a dream.  In the dream God showed him that his students were to be missionaries.  That morning, he announced what he felt God was saying to his students.

After Ismael and I spoke, we agreed to share the opportunity with our respective staff.  We fasted and prayed about it as a staff.  Many of these students have come from the streets.  They don’t have money for tuition, but they believe in a big God.  They trust God to supply their needs, and He does. 

While plans for this training center have been on paper for five years, it represented a major departure for our ministry.  AIM started as a short-term missions agency.  Our objective has always been to raise up a new generation of passionately committed disciples.  Short-term missions has been a great mobilization tool.  Now, God was asking us to go beyond mobilization and into training.  Eventually, we hoped to establish a network of training centers around the world, but this was the first.

None of this would have happened had God not met me in prayer.  It was there, in prayer, that things were set in motion.  Later, I watched in amazement as the promises of the Lord became reality.  I don’t why it is that I’m amazed.  I know from experiences like this one that what the Bible teaches about power coming through prayer is true.  Yet my mind is programmed to analyze events rationally.

How many dreams has God given us that might come to fruition if we just had the patience to wait on Him for His guidance and provision?  That we can be partners with the almighty God of the universe is as amazing as it is improbable.  The results of that partnership can sometimes be overwhelming.